1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computers, and more particularly, to processing a previously compressed data stream and more particularly to recompression thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's society, computer systems are commonplace. Computer systems may be found in the workplace, at home, or at school. Computer systems may include data storage systems, or disk storage systems, to process and store data. Data storage systems, or disk storage systems, are utilized to process and store data. A storage system may include one or more disk drives. The disk drives may be configured in an array, such as a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) topology, to provide data security in the event of a hardware or software failure. The data storage systems may be connected to a host, such as a mainframe computer. The disk drives in many data storage systems have commonly been known as Direct Access Storage Devices (DASD). DASD devices typically store data on a track, which is a circular path on the surface of a disk on which information is recorded and from which recorded information is read.
In recent years, both software and hardware technologies have experienced amazing advancement. With the new technology, more and more functions are added and greater convenience is provided for use with these electronic appliances. One of the most noticeable changes introduced by recent computer technology is the inclusion of images, video, and audio to enhance the previous text-only user interfaces. In the age of multimedia, the amount of information to be processed increases greatly. One popular method of handling large data files is to compress the data for storage or transmission. Therefore, processing very large amounts of information is a key problem to solve. One example of compressing data or images is the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) standard that allows for the interchange of images between diverse applications and open up the capability to provide digital continuous-tone color ac images in anti-media applications. The JPEG standard has been fully generalized to perform regardless of image content and to accommodate a wide variety of data compression demands. Therefore, encoders and decoders employing the JPEG standard in one or more of several versions have come into relatively widespread use and allow wide access to images for a wide variety of purposes. Moreover, other compression format methods have been used to meet the data compression demands.